It was a quiet day on Nashville’s Legislative Plaza, but Daniel Vander Ley remained at his post, next to an 8-foot tall airbrushed painting of Jesus.

Jesus was spanking a red-bottomed little girl, as two other children looked on.

“The question I want to ask Tennessee with this piece is ‘Is this your Jesus?’” Vander Ley said Tuesday. “Because if Jesus loves the children and he doesn’t spank children, why do we let schools spank our children?”

Vander Ley, who grew up in a conservative, homeschooling Christian family in rural Michigan “similar to Westboro Baptist Church,” he said, was spanked as a child.

He said he quit his job two months ago to take up the cause of advocating against corporal punishment in the 19 states in America where spanking is still permitted in some public schools.

“It tells a kid the authority figures aren’t there to protect them,” Vander Ley said. “That authority figures are there to judge them, to punish them.”

An airbrush painting being displayed at Legislative Plaza on Tuesday in protest of corporal punishment, which is still legal in Tennessee.(Photo: Natalie Allison)

Demonstrations in Tennessee, elsewhere

Currently on his way to Art Prize, a weeks-long competition in Grand Rapids, Mich., where he’ll display the art, Vander Ley stopped earlier this week in Kansas to demonstrate outside of Westboro Baptist Church.

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While many on social media are defending a Maryland substitute teacher videotaped slinging a belt towards students, the school and some parents are outraged.

In addition to public demonstrations to raise awareness about corporal punishment, Vander Ley runs a parody website called Extremist Supply Company, where he sells belts with buckles reading “Fundamentalism,” a word he said he has trademarked for use on belts.

Vander Ley said he hasn’t yet sold any of the belts, which are listed for $225.

He has reached out by email to all of Tennessee’s legislators, though hasn’t heard back from any yet. Vander Ley said it appears his emails have gone to spam folders.

In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporal punishment in schools was not banned under the Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.(Photo: Getty Images)

According to records released in July by the Tennessee Department of Education, in the school systems surrounding Davidson County, where corporal punishment isn’t permitted in Metro schools, just Robertson County and Rutherford schools allow spanking.

Sumner County schools didn’t respond to a survey question by the Department of Education on the issue.

While Tennessee state law permits public school teachers and principals to use corporal punishment against a student “for good cause in order to maintain disciple and order,” it also allows locals boards of education to adopt policies on spanking and whether it’s permitted.